SJ. Posted April 18, 2017 Share Posted April 18, 2017 If you have experience with Beyond the Book Report Season 1 can you tell me your experience? Do you recommend it? Is it a full year program? How long does each lesson take? How many lessons are there? Thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 Listening in... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom31257 Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 I'm going to have some experience with it in the next 6 weeks because I will be using it with ds. I could come back and tell you more afterwards. He actually has already done most of Season 3 because his co-op writing class used it this year. I bought all 3 Seasons because I teach some of the middle school writing classes. I liked the looks of all of it, especially Season 1. It will be easier than what he did in co-op, but he won't mind that at all! Our co-op is using Season 1 and 2 for our 7th-8th graders next year. If you have questions about specifics on the assignments before I use it, I'll be glad to share that with you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJ. Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 I'm going to have some experience with it in the next 6 weeks because I will be using it with ds. I could come back and tell you more afterwards. He actually has already done most of Season 3 because his co-op writing class used it this year. I bought all 3 Seasons because I teach some of the middle school writing classes. I liked the looks of all of it, especially Season 1. It will be easier than what he did in co-op, but he won't mind that at all! Our co-op is using Season 1 and 2 for our 7th-8th graders next year. If you have questions about specifics on the assignments before I use it, I'll be glad to share that with you. Since your some did Season 3 can you share the length of assignments and whether it is a full writing curriculum? Somehow I came under the impression that season 1 is literature projects and is not a full program. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom31257 Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 Since your some did Season 3 can you share the length of assignments and whether it is a full writing curriculum? Somehow I came under the impression that season 1 is literature projects and is not a full program. Season 3 was definitely a full writing curriculum if you mean including essays and research papers. There are rubrics for all the assignments, which make grading so easy. There are videos teaching the material, too. The assignments in Season 1 and 2 are very different from most writing curricula I've seen, but they are meant to be writing about literature. The fact that they are different is why I want ds to do some of them. I wanted to review literary elements, so the first part works perfectly. I'm particularly interested in the journalism section, too. Here are descriptions of the seasons. Season 1 has them read three books. The writing assignments include paraphrasing a favorite scene, writing a 2 page plot summary, completing a literary terms worksheet, creating study questions or a crossword puzzle, creating a pamphlet of major literary elements (which is at least 8 paragraphs), writing news articles on favorite scenes in the book (including writing from two different biases and at least 4 paragraphs each). Season 2 has them read two books in addition to A Midsummer Night's Dream. The assignments include a figurative language activity, a game, a poetry final test, write four types of poems based on literary elements of a book, write paraphrases and prose of some scenes from Midsummer Night's Dream, and write a dramatized version of a favorite chapter or scene in a book. Here's what's in Season 3. It has 3 modules, essays, oral presentations, and research papers. The assignments include writing literary analysis essays over short stories provided in the curriculum (our teacher let the students choose their own book or story if they wanted), personal essays (like college applications), SAT essays, oral Powerpoint (or other technology) book report, a literary author biography book report, and an argumentative research paper (that our class is probably not going to have time to do). I hope this helps! I think it's a wonderful curriculum. I teach IEW classes at our co-op and used IEW with my ds for 4 years. He's been in other classes since, but IEW gave him a good base to go into the others. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJ. Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 Thank you, this is very helpful! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SebastianCat Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 My DD is using season 1 right now, but we are not using it for the full year. You could easily make the program last as long as you'd like, by having your child do more than one of each type of writing assignment. It's very open-ended, meaning you have a lot of flexibility in the length of assignments, because the student is tasked with calculating how long it will take to read the book, then complete the writing assignment. I think it's an excellent transition-level program for middle schoolers, because it gives them more ownership of the process, preparing them for open-ended high school assignments. (Example: when my DS did Season 1, he calculated that he would need a certain number of days to read the book and complete the report, but then later realized that he "counted" 5 days per week but because of our co-op on Fridays, didn't actually do any work on Fridays. So he ended up scrambling to complete everything at the end. It was one of those hard lessons that has stuck with him, and I don't think he's made the same mistake since then.) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom31257 Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 You're welcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJ. Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 Since there is so much flexibility and has such an emphasis on literary terms and writing assignments can it be used in conjunction with another program? Or would that be overkill? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SebastianCat Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 Since there is so much flexibility and has such an emphasis on literary terms and writing assignments can it be used in conjunction with another program? Or would that be overkill? Yes, it could be used in conjunction with another program. BTBR includes reading time in the assignments, so your student could be reading the book for BTBR while doing daily writing assignments in the secondary program, then take a break from the secondary program to do the actual writing for BTBR (or vice versa). Or you could schedule BTBR after finishing a program that doesn't take a full year. (That's what we did for DD - she started the Jump In writing program in 6th grade and worked through the book, taking about 1 1/2 school years to finish, then started BTBR in February after she finished Jump In. She will only do one report for each of the 3 types of reports in Season 1 before we finish our school year.) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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